Tuesday, June 07, 2016

Two pieces I ran into today show us just how hostile a political landscape we now inhabit.

First, Tammy Bruce argues
that the various anti-Trump riots aren't animated by leftist sympathy
so much as orchestrated by leftists:

Make no mistake --
these supposed anti-Trump riots are not organic nor are they natural;
they are the result of leftist organizing using paid stooges. Fox News
reported in March a Craigslist ad posted by Bernie Sanders supporters
offering $15 an hour to protest at a Trump rally in Wisconsin. They
would also provide shuttle bus transport, parking if you needed it and
ready-made signs. [links dropped]

In a sense, it is good
news that these protests don't reflect any widespread tendency
towards violent conduct. Indeed, they will probably benefit the
Republican nominee, making him look like a voice of calm amid the
storm. Too bad that nominee is Donald Trump, who the Washington
Postnotes,
is ignorant at best of the law he may be charged with executing and
(as I suspect) contemptuous of rule of law at worst:

The
fact that Mr. Trump has not filed such a motion [regarding alleged
bias by a judge hearing a case against him] says a lot about his
attitude toward the rule of law and stable political processes --
more, in a sense, than his bigoted attacks on the judge
themselves. When things don't go his way, Mr. Trump's first resort is
not to use options for redress the system provides; it is, rather, to
blame his problems on an enemy and whip up public hostility against
him, in crude ethnic terms, if it seems advantageous. One implication
of Mr. Trump's words, that he is the one with a bias, against
Americans of Latino heritage, is bad enough; possibly worse is the
ominous signal his behavior sends about how a President Trump would
deal with any sort of opposition he might encounter. [links
dropped]

So we have a candidate who will seek to
intimidate opponents (but who might preserve political institutions
she thinks can benefit her) versus one who doesn't know or care about
our institutions. As bad as Clinton is, I think that under her, at
least our institutions will suffer less damage than they will under
Trump. Furthermore, at least Clinton won't be mistaken as an ally by
Americans who value freedom and are suspicious of the left, whereas
Trump apparently is, in large part due to the efforts of the
left.

6 comments:

I sympathize with Trump on this one. This is a strange feeling for me (I support open borders). Is it really racist to suggest membership in La Raza Lawyers risks bias toward a guy with such a bad immigration policy? I'm not saying Trump is right, I'm saying I don't see the charge of racism is justified.

First, it is different to say, "This judge is unfit because he is a member of a racist organization," than, "This judge is unqualified because he's Mexican." The first is a legitimate complaint and the second isn't. That said, I was posting about a different issue, which was how Trump has reacted to the possibility that the judge is biased.

Second, since many people who follow this blog seem to be confused about my position on immigration, I will state that, while I think people should be free to live wherever they wish, so long as they are not criminals or combatants, I think we do need citizenship reform. And we need to phase out the welfare state altogether.

I accept your point about how Trump chose to handle this. While I disagree with the intimidation, I don't see that as different than the way Clinton has handled such things in the past; neither in principle nor in severity. On the other hand, Clinton most certainly would also use the methods provided by the courts.

Also, from what I can tell Trump's position is not that ALL Mexican judges are incapable of remaining impartial (a racist position), but that this particular one is. I don't know if that's true, but that argument is not completely without merit. And it is one he's made; in the Jake Tapper interview Trump was pressed on this issue and responded by saying something to the effect of, "Curiel is a member of a society that is pro-Mexican," which appears to be a reference to La Raza Lawyers of San Diego, a group that has ties to the National Council of La Raza.

I have not written anything other than off-hand comments about that because I have not thought enough about the subject to feel comfortable doing so. Also, the issue of ending the welfare state is far more important for reasons I have already discussed.